Recreating Joy

Myra and Kathy Betty

I’d been widowed about a year and thought I was doing pretty well. I was dressed, upright and out pretending to be a business woman again. Networking has always been something I enjoy and although I hadn’t really been working with clients much in the last couple years during my husband’s illness and death, going to a networking event was a great way to reconnect with old friends and business associates. I was excited to attend an event with the Board of Directors Network (now called OnBoard.)

The speaker was Kathy Betty, who at the time had recently purchased Atlanta’s WNBA team, The Atlanta Dream. I love hearing the stories of successful women and I also knew from articles in the paper that she was a widow, too. Her husband, Gary Betty, CEO of EarthLink had died of cancer a couple of years before mine. After hearing her speak about the importance of sports to girls and young women I went up to shake her hand and say that in my interviews with business women many had echoed her statements of the role sports had played in their lives. I also mentioned that I was recently widowed.

She took my hand in both of hers and drew her face close to mine. “Look into my eyes. Do you see the joy there? You will find joy again,” she said firmly. “I know it may not seem like it now but you will.”

It was a brief exchange as other people were waiting to speak to her but her words of encouragement were invaluable. I kept the in back of my mind and in my heart as an affirmation, a promise and sometimes as a distant goal. Joy. Oh, to feel joy again!